Smoking hot mama Miranda Kerr

steven meisel via mayfrayn/tfs

She has yet to grace the cover of her home country edition, but September is shaping up as the month in which Miranda Kerr hit the big time in the international Vogue stakes, with three editorials inside the September edition of US Vogue and the September covers of both Vogue España and now Vogue Italia. Shot by Steven Meisel in 3D, even Kerr’s pooch Frankie gets a lookin on the Italian cover. It wasn’t the Yorkshire terrier that grabbed frockwriter’s attention in two images in the accompanying 12-page editorial, however, but a cigarette (above, below). And it's not the first time Kerr has been photographed smoking this year. In June, she appeared topless, cigarette in hand, in issue 114 of French magazine Numéro. 

Although tobacco advertising may have been outlawed in many countries, of course it’s not illegal to smoke. 

Anecdotally, a very high percentage of fashion models appear to be smokers. With research linking smoking with dieting amongst adolescent girls, the prevalence of smoking in the model population is presumably not solely due to any perceived “cool” factor. 

According to Kerr’s publicist, Carlii Lyon, however, Kerr is not a smoker. Not only that, Kerr has been evangelising a chemical-free lifestyle through her own organic skincare line Kora and her website. 

Moreover as the author of Treasure Yourself, an upcoming self-help book for all those highly impressionable teenage girls, which purports to "instruct her generation... how they can achieve greater health and happiness", Kerr also appears to be going out of her way to tout herself as a role model. 

Leaving aside the possibility that Kerr may well also have been pregnant at the time of the Vogue Italia shoot, which some might find distasteful, don’t the 4000-odd chemicals, including 50 known carcinogens, with which the cancer sticks she’s waving around as part of her current “high fashion” reinvention are riddled, seem somewhat at odds with her own core values?

Not according to Carlii Lyon, who told frockwriter:

"Fashion can at the best of times be very theatrical and in some instances cigarettes are used as props. In this particular image Miranda is playing a role and in no way does it reflect her personal values". 

steven meisel via mayfrayn/tfs

Lyon said she is not 100% sure when the Vogue Italia shoot took place, but that it may have been in “June or July”. She is checking.

Kerr did do several shoots while pregnant, said Lyon. Given that Kerr recently told Vogue España she was “four months along”, she could have been two to three months pregnant at the time of the Vogue Italia cover shoot. As in the David Jones Spring 2010 catalogue images, she certainly looks fuller-figured than usual in these shots.

Kerr may still lack the 'high fashion' track record of some other models, including Australia’s Abbey Lee Kershaw and Russia’s Natasha Poly. But she is definitely catching up. 

As far the celebrity factor goes, however, she is a much bigger name - her recent marriage to Hollywood actor Orlando Bloom and the baby news having only increased her visibility across the globe.
 
With the Vogue Italia editorial entitled simply “Miranda – photographed by Steven Meisel”, it’s a little hard to argue that Kerr isn't being photographed as a celebrity in her own right here.